Understanding wage audits and compliance
Shana Schreier-Joffe explains the importance of wage audits, using her expertise to break down the complexities of modern awards and how businesses can ensure they’re meeting legal pay requirements.
About the speaker
In 2019, Shana was named a finalist in the Women in Law Awards for the category of ‘Partner of the Year – SME’ and has been named a Leading Employment Lawyer in the prestigious Doyles Guide. Shana is a frequent guest speaker at many industry functions and legal seminars and presents workplace training to clients on all aspects of employment and workplace law.
Summary
In this expert discussion, Shana Schreier-Joffe explains the critical role of wage audits in ensuring businesses remain compliant with Fair Work Australia regulations and modern award requirements. Wage compliance is becoming increasingly complex, with businesses needing to navigate award classifications, penalty rates, and entitlements to avoid potential underpayment risks and legal consequences.
Shana leverages her deep expertise in employment law and compliance to break down the challenges businesses face when managing payroll accuracy. She offers practical insights and best practices to help businesses review their wage structures, conduct thorough audits, and ensure they are paying employees correctly under Australian workplace laws.
Key takeaways
- The importance of wage audits in maintaining compliance
- How businesses can navigate modern award complexities
- Identifying and addressing common payroll errors and risks
- Best practices for ensuring accurate pay calculations
- How proactive compliance can prevent legal disputes and financial penalties
With increasing regulatory scrutiny on payroll practices, businesses must take a proactive approach to wage audits to avoid non-compliance risks. Watch the full interview to gain expert insights into how your business can stay compliant and protect itself from payroll liabilities.
Transcript
0:00
Wage audits are really a look at a business's why they pay their people to ensure that their payment systems and the actual amounts paid to employees are in accordance with what the law requires. For most employers, they have lots of employees who are covered by modern awards.
0:18
The modern awards are quite complex with different classification, different pay periods, different rates for different times of the day, night, weekends, penalty rates, starting times, finishing times and for a lot of organisations and businesses to ensure that employees are being paid in accordance with the award so that there is not an underpayment.
0:39
That becomes a complex task and sometimes they get it wrong and a wage audit allows the business to look at that in a very quick and easy manner and say to that business or that employee or for those employees, and that's choice business has, you've paid them in accordance with the award, more than the award or less than what's required under the award. And so they know where they're at.
